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The Shipping News

发布时间: 2010-03-13 05:14:29 作者:

 The Shipping News


基本信息出版社:Scribner
页码:352 页
出版日期:1994年06月
ISBN:0671510053
条形码:9780671510053
版本:1
装帧:平装
开本:32开 Pages Per Sheet
外文书名:航运新闻

内容简介 Book Description
When Quoyle's two-timing wife meets her just desserts, he retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters and family members all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As Quoyle confronts his private demons -- and the unpredictable forces of nature and society -- he begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery. A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family, "The Shipping News" shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.

Amazon.com
In this touching and atmospheric novel set among the fishermen of Newfoundland, Proulx tells the story of Quoyle. From all outward appearances, Quoyle has gone through his first 36 years on earth as a big schlump of a loser. He's not attractive, he's not brilliant or witty or talented, and he's not the kind of person who typically assumes the central position in a novel. But Proulx creates a simple and compelling tale of Quoyle's psychological and spiritual growth. Along the way, we get to look in on the maritime beauty of what is probably a disappearing way of life.

From Publishers Weekly
Proulx has followed Postcards , her story of a family and their farm, with an extraordinary second novel of another family and the sea. The fulcrum is Quoyle, a patient, self-deprecating, oversized hack writer who, following the deaths of nasty parents and a succubus of a wife, moves with his two daughters and straight-thinking aunt back to the ancestral manse in Killick-Claw, a Newfoundland harbor town of no great distinction. There, Quoyle finds a job writing about car crashes and the shipping news for The Gammy Bird , a local paper kept afloat largely by reports of sexual abuse cases and comical typographical errors. Killick-Claw may not be perfect, but it is a stable enough community for Quoyle and Co. to recover from the terrors of their past lives. But the novel is much more than Quoyle's story: it is a moving evocation of a place and people buffeted by nature and change. Proulx routinely does without nouns and conjunctions--"Quoyle, grinning. Expected to hear they were having a kid. Already picked himself for godfather"--but her terse prose seems perfectly at home on the rocky Newfoundland coast. She is in her element both when creating haunting images (such as Quoyle's inbred, mad and mean forbears pulling their house across the ice after being ostracized by more God-fearing folk) and when lyrically rendering a routine of gray, cold days filled with cold cheeks, squidburgers, fried bologna and the sea.

From Library Journal
Off the beaten track of contemporary American fiction in both style and setting, this remarkable second novel by the author of Postcards ( LJ 12/1/91) should capture the attention of readers and critics. Huge, homely Quoyle works off and on for a newspaper. His cheating wife Petal is killed in a car crash while abandoning him and their two preschool daughters. Wallowing in grief, Quoyle agrees to accompany his elderly aunt and resettle in a remote Newfoundland fishing village. Memorable characters--gay aunt Agnis, difficult daughter Bunny, new love interest Wavey, many colorful locals in their new hometown--combine with dark stories of the Quoyle family's past and the staccato, often subjectless or verbless sentences (bound to make English teachers cringe) to create a powerful whole. For most fiction collections.
                            - Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.

From AudioFile
Quoyle returns to his ancestral home in Newfoundland, along with his two daughters and his aunt. Escaping from the memories of his dead wife, Quoyle fights to establish a new life for his extended family. Robert Joy reads in a slow, stiff voice as he tries to bring the characters to life. Joy's narration doesn't connect emotionally with Proulx's characters or their actions. The smooth flow of narrative is truncated by choppy dialogue and a sharply abridged disjointed plot. As the story progresses, the threads of plot slowly come together, creating a picture of life on the windswept coast of Newfoundland. M.B.K.

Book Dimension
length: (cm)21.6                 width:(cm)14
作者简介 Annie Proulx's The Shipping News won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award for Fiction, and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. She is the author of two other novels: Postcards, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Accordion Crimes. She has also written two collections of short stories, Heart Songs and Other Stories and Close Range. In 2001, The Shipping News was made into a major motion picture. Annie Proulx lives in Wyoming and Newfoundland.
媒体推荐 Bruce Allen"USA Today"The writing is charged with sardonic wit -- alive, funny, a little threatening; packed with brilliantly original images...and, now and then, a sentence that simply takes your breath away.
编辑推荐 Stephen JonesChicago TribuneThe Shipping News is that rare creation, a lyric page-turner.^Bruce AllenUSA TodayThe writing is charged with sardonic wit -- alive, funny, a little threatening; packed with brilliantly original images...and, now and then, a sentence that simply takes your breath away.^Roz SpaffordSan Francisco Examiner & ChronicleAnnie Proulx's stunning, big-hearted The Shipping News thaws the frozen lives of its characters and warms readers.
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